


come back as something organic

by attheborder



Category: What We Do in the Shadows (TV)
Genre: Bitchy Witches, Colin Robinson Being Terrible, Dank Memes, F/M, Humor, Misunderstandings, Nadja's Makeup Addiction, Pastiche, Self-Esteem Issues, True Love, Turned Human (Temporarily), Yuletide 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:28:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21556273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheborder/pseuds/attheborder
Summary: After an argument with Laszlo and a trip to Target, Nadja gets taught a lesson by a local witch.
Relationships: Laszlo Cravensworth/Nadja
Comments: 52
Kudos: 123
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	come back as something organic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sophiahelix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiahelix/gifts).



> thank you to [JustStandingHere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/juststandinghere) for the beta!

> _NADJA_
> 
> _I would say, personal brand is very important to vampires. Everyone has their thing. For some people, it is looking like a male prostitute, like my friend Simon the Devious. For me, I spend a lot of time on my aesthetic— I call it Cruel Bambina Suffragette. You have the hair, see, obviously it’s hard work to have it look this perfect always. The outfits, I have been collecting designer clothes for hundreds of years. And, of course, makeup. Here is my cosmetics table. This lipstick, I stole in 1964 off of a very sexy lady, I saw that color and I was like, that is mine now. And also your blood too. She did not seem to mind._

All Nadja wants tonight is for Laszlo to help her decide what to wear to the Vampire Social next week. Without use of a mirror, she needs that extra pair of eyes to help her match colors and fabrics, and Laszlo’s taste usually aligns well enough with her own for her to trust him. 

But as she strips in and out of various gowns and corsets, nothing feels quite right, despite his praise. The weight of his eyes on her are speaking volumes. He doesn’t want to be playing dress-up, she can tell; he’d rather be fucking. But she _needs_ him to do this for her, and it’s not _her_ fault he’s getting distracted, is it? 

As she buttons up a new dress, he slinks across the room towards her and nuzzles into her bosom, his wide hands pressing at the cold curve of her waist.

“My imperious princess of the night,” he says, smacking wet kisses up the side of her arm. “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you—” 

“Get off me,” she snaps, and he backs off so obediently it sends a twinge of regret through her chest. 

See, sometimes when he gets horny like this it’s nice, but other times it upsets her, and she can never really tell why. Maybe it’s that when she’s trying to express herself and her personality, and all he can do is get hard, she feels like he’s not really _seeing_ her. He’s seeing the glamorous seductress of the evening that gifted him with immortality. Nadja wishes he could just see, well, _Nadja._

She knows she has that effect on most everyone. It’s part and parcel of her set of vampire powers, and she enjoys it, most of the time. It makes feeding easier; it makes _life_ easier, to be her specific kind of supernaturally pretty. But she doesn’t _feel_ pretty, is the problem, and Laszlo’s attention, usually so welcome, is currently only making it worse. Right now, she feels like a fake, a facade slathered on top of hundreds of years of undeath, a poor girl from a snake-infested village who never would’ve been anyone if she hadn’t become a vampire and maybe, underneath, still isn’t much of anyone at all. 

“This is so stupid!” she snaps, lashing out at Laszlo. “You are stupid. You know, I didn’t _have_ to bite _you._ I could have seduced _any_ slob in that shit little town.”

“You don’t mean that,” says Laszlo, in a tone he probably thinks is mollifying but is still more lecherous than anything. 

On principle, she scowls at him instead. “You just had the house on the furthest edge, I happened to see it first as I entered. I only realized a few decades later that’s because you had been ostracized, because of the leprosy.” 

“Well,” he says, “I, personally, am happy you chose me, because it meant I get to spend eternal life with you, my beguiling companion.” 

“Go beguile your own dick,” Nadja says.

“That’s a thought,” says Laszlo, looking down at his crotch, like he’s seriously thinking about it. 

Nadja strides across the foyer and picks up the mail from the counter, where Guillermo’s dropped it after bringing it in. She shuffles through a few unopened envelopes from the city, stamped with important-looking words in red like “OVERDUE” and “AUDIT WARNING” and tosses them aside, before coming across a glossy, pastel-pink-edged flyer. Reading it, her scowl morphs reluctantly into a slight smile. 

She waves the flyer at Laszlo, who is still contemplating his groinal area. 

“I am leaving, I cannot stand being around you anymore,” she says. “They have the new Sonia Kashuk brushes at Target. I think I will treat myself.” Retail therapy is sounding good right now; she’d much rather busy herself with buying little plastic things than introspect on the implications of her husband’s devotion.

“Have fun, darling,” Laszlo says, looking at her with those big eyes, and she can’t quite make herself look back. She flings open the front door and bats away into the night.

> _NADJA_
> 
> _We are at the big Target at the mall. Target is a special place for all supernatural creatures. You have to be very careful, you never know who you’ll run into. It is open late, so you get the vampires coming in for some shopping when they wake up. See, over there, a werewolf buying razors. ...That’s a lot of razors. Oh, and that is definitely a ghost. So sad, her hand went right through the Keurig. Aww. I see a banshee, over there, trying out the karaoke machine… let’s stay away from there. And a ghoul buying sanitary pads, yes, for all the slime, I hear that’s the big thing with them now._

After a half-dozen centuries of eternal life, Nadja has gotten more than a little tired of art and culture. Humans just make the same stuff over and over, genuinely believing they’re saying something new every time. Plus, museums are so rarely open during her vampiric waking hours. But, ah— the endless, shining halls of the Museum of Now, the great cathedral of the commercial that is Staten Island’s Richmond Shopping Center— now _here_ is a place she will never tire of. Even if most of the wares aren’t quite to her taste, the scent of human blood running high with the hungry adrenaline of desperate consumerism is enough to give her a contact high, one strong enough to counteract her distaste at whatever ugly shit is currently displayed in the front window of Brandy Melville. 

Nadja roams the aisles of Target’s brightly lit cosmetics section, admiring the ranges of nail polish shades in every luminescent color of the spectrum, the graceful shapes of the curlers and tweezers, all the innovative new textures and formulas of shadows and creams and powders.

She thinks about how back in her day, if the makeup didn’t give you lead poisoning it would probably break you out into a painful rash, clog your lungs or permanently stain your skin. She’s grateful to have lived to see the advent of such brilliant technology as felt-tip black eyeliner and quick-dry glossy topcoat. 

Finally, after getting distracted by a new L’Oreal foundation shade advertised to be even paler than the fairest 00 shade, she makes her way to the Sonia Kashuk shelf, excited to get her claws on that new brush set.

One of the main problems about only being able to get to Target after the sun’s gone down, and all the humans have already made their daytime shopping runs, is that you’re in great danger of being subject to sell-outs. But in that moment, Nadja thinks she’s lucked out. Of the dozens of new brush sets that must have been stocked that morning, there’s still exactly one left, sitting pretty on its otherwise empty shelf in a beautifully designed clear plastic case. 

Nadja’s world narrows to a pinpoint as she goes into hunting mode. She slinks down the aisle towards the shelf, long skirt swishing, her feet lifting slightly off the ground in her excitement. But as she nears her destination, and reaches out to grab the brush set, someone comes into view. There’s a woman coming around the aisle from the other side, apparently just as intent on the brushes as Nadja. Uh oh.

Her hand just about beats Nadja’s to it, but within an instant they’re caught in a tug of war. Nadja hisses, ruby lips bared around white fangs, defending her prize. But instead of letting go and jumping back in terror, the other woman just stares back, dark eyes unblinking. So Nadja puts her supernatural strength to use and pulls, _hard,_ and the plastic case finally jerks free from the woman’s grip.

Najda stumbles backwards with a triumphant _“Ha!”_ and raises the case above her head. “I got the brushes! Fuck you! I got them!” 

It’s only then that Nadja recognizes the fashionably ragged brown and green robes the woman is wearing, and the arcane tattoos wrapped around her wrist and fingers. They’re moving slowly across her skin, morphing and shifting. 

“Oh _shit,_ it’s a witch,” says Nadja, wide-eyed, realizing she might have just completely fucked herself over.

“What the fuck, dude?” cries the witch indignantly. “Those were _mine,_ you vampire slut! _”_

“Have them, have them!” Nadja says, urgently offering out the sleek plastic package to the witch, but it’s too late— the witch doesn’t even give it a glance. She’s staring intently at Nadia with a storm in her eyes; her hands have started up a strange dance, the tattoos moving faster now.

“Vampire Nadja, of Staten Island, you have messed with the wrong witch!”

“How do you even know my name?”

The witch ignores her and intones something guttural and harsh, moving her hands, creating patterns of shadow in the air. With a wordless cry, the witch completes the sigil and pushes it out towards Nadja across the aisle. 

There’s a _POP!_ and a puff of brown smoke and Nadja is rocked by the impact of the spell _,_ the witch’s magic starting deep inside at her very essence and working itself outwards. She feels her fangs recede and her skin redden; her lustrous hair dries and frizzes from the scalp. 

The witch’s harsh yet melodious cackle echoes through the makeup aisle. Through the haze of enchanted pain Nadja finds herself just a bit jealous; that bitch doesn’t _deserve_ a laugh that wonderfully evil. Then the cloud dissipates and she’s dropping to her knees, the breath knocked out of her, her heart pounding loudly and oddly in her chest.

“What did you _do_ to me?” she croaks.

“Why don’t you take a look and see?” From above her, the witch leans down to shove something in her face. It’s a hand mirror, grabbed from a nearby shelf. Nadja looks into it, and screams. 

She stands up on wobbly legs and flees, knocking displays of fancy conditioner and lip balm over as she careens towards the safe haven of the dressing room area. 

“Don’t come in,” sobs Nadja from inside the red-doored stall. “I don’t want cameras to see me. Oh, fucking hell, I am disgusting. That witch made me disgusting!” 

> _GUILLERMO_
> 
> _Yeah, I guess I’m technically only Nandor’s familiar. But I don’t think Nadja and Laszlo are very good at remembering that. Plus, in a roommate situation, you know, haha, “what’s yours is mine,” right? Well. Maybe not in all roommate situations. But, uh. Definitely this one._

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” Guillermo had said over the phone, which Nadja didn’t even bother to be grateful for, because if he hadn’t done what she asked him to, he would’ve had to face a world of punishment, and he knew it. 

But close to an hour passes before he finally arrives, an hour Nadja spends sobbing helplessly in the dressing room stall. People keep coming to knock and ask if she’s okay; she can’t even hypnotize them away. Thank god for the camera crew, freaking out her interlopers enough to turn them away with furrowed brows. 

“Nadja,” says Guillermo, tapping at the dressing room door. “Nadja, you can come out. I promise I won’t laugh.” 

Nadja swallows hard and pushes the door open, and reveals her cursed state. Her beautiful jewel-toned gown had long dropped to the floor, unworthy to be worn after the transformation she’d undergone. Out of necessity, she’d scrambled into the clothes left over by the previous occupant: an ugly floral tunic over jeans, a knit cardigan, practical sneakers to match. Her cheeks are plump and pink, her teeth squared, her formerly sleek, sable tresses a tangled mousy brown. 

To his credit, as she steps out Guillermo keeps a straight face. But there _is_ a harsh, ugly laughter coming from the person standing beside him...

“What the fuck is _he_ doing here?” Nadja shrieks at Guillermo. Her shriek isn’t up to par with her usual standards, given the shitty human throat she’s currently working with.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Guillermo says, “that’s why I was late, I was _trying_ to get him not to come—”

“You know, well, Nadja, when I heard from Guillermo here that you were at Target and something terrible had happened to you,” Colin Robinson says, “I had already been thinking of coming by to pick up some folding chairs but you know, late at night they tend to run out of stuff, so I wasn’t sure if I should bother making the trip, in case they didn’t have any folding chairs left, but then I remembered that late at night they also put stuff out on sale that didn’t sell during the day—” 

Nadja, unwilling to let her essential self be any more diminished than it already has been by the witch’s curse, pushes past Colin Robinson, out of his feeding zone of the dressing room area and into the store at large. By now the witch is probably long gone, back to her coven or cave or wherever it is witches hang out, Nadja isn’t entirely clear. She’s probably using those damned brushes right now, cackling to herself, the bitch. 

“Nadja, wait!” Guillermo calls, jogging to catch up, ignoring the blaring sound of the store’s shoplifter alert as Nadja strides out wearing her unpurchased clothes. 

Back inside the store, Colin Robinson has cornered a red-polo’d Target employee and is pressing her about the difference between two different brands of electric toothbrush. “See, I’ve seen a lot of ads on Facebook for this one, but you really never know with those, I’d much rather hear about the product from a _real_ salesperson, and this other one has better reviews on Amazon, although one person did say— here, wait, let me read you what they said, I bookmarked it on my phone—” 

***

“Take me home immediately,” Nadja demands, sitting in the passenger seat of Guillermo’s car, and then almost instantly reconsiders. How could she let Laszlo or Nandor see her in this state? It’s bad enough that Colin Robinson already caught a glimpse, and she doesn’t even respect him at all. “Actually, _don’t_ take me home.” She shakes her head, and changes her mind again. “Actually, yes take me home, and then sneak me in through the back—”

“If you’re human,” says Guillermo practically, “even if it’s just temporary, that means you have to come along with me on my errands right now. I have a lot of stuff to do before I head back to the house.” 

“What?!” she says, outraged. “I do not have to do anything with _you.”_

“Yeah?” he asks, his face infuriatingly neutral. He could be preening and posturing right now at her misfortune, the polite bugger, but somehow this insistent gentleness is worse. 

“Yeah!” she says emphatically.

“But like, what are you gonna do?” he says, a hint of a smirk appearing on his face. “ _Bite_ me?”

So that is how she ends up accompanying Guillermo on his nighttime errands, which include a few shopping runs before the stores close and then the tricky but necessary work of burying some of the corpses left over from the vampires’ recent feeding sessions.

“You little bastard, you are enjoying this,” she says helplessly, struggling under the weight of the squishy human body she’d been happily draining not six hours ago, before this whole mess began. 

“I’m not,” says Guillermo guilelessly, “though I guess it is nice having some help for once.”

Once the body’s in the ground Nadja slumps senselessly against a nearby tree, hand to her face. “Fuck, I feel so… heavy. And weak. My head is like a big cloud. I’m full of cloud… My eyes are itchy... Being a human is _awful,_ I’d forgotten.”

“You’re just _tired,_ Nadja, it’s the middle of the night,” says Guillermo, dusting his hands off with the air of a professional. “That’s probably why you feel like crap. The witch’s curse must have reset your internal clock to regular human rhythms.” 

Nadja battles a yawn. “But you’re human, too!” she says, not understanding. “This means you feel like this… all the time, when you are up at night with us?”

Guillermo shrugs. “Guess so.” 

Nadja is used to helpfully instinctive terror being her reaction to the realization that the sun is about to come up, but as the sky lightens to the east she feels her brittle human interior bend towards it, like a fragile flower. It’s not a particularly comfortable feeling. She misses the night already. 

“I want to go home,” she says unhappily, staring at a sun she hasn’t seen in half a millennium. She never liked it much even when she was human, and now it just seems like it’s laughing at her and her misfortune. She wants to be safe and cozy back inside her coffin. She remembers how mad she was at Laszlo when she stormed out of the house earlier; how if she can never show her face to him again due to being permanently cursed into ugliness, the last he’ll remember of her is that she told him he wasn’t special, that she would’ve bit anyone, that it didn’t have to be him. 

“I can take us back, but...” Guillermo begins thoughtfully, and Nadja’s already just a bit grateful for the plausible deniability he’s about to bestow up on her, to delay her shameful homecoming. “But I’m hungry. Are you hungry?” 

Nadja falls asleep on the way there. The car slows to a halt and she blinks awake, aware of every creaking bone in her delicate mortal body. “Where are we?” she groans.

Guillermo grins almost ferally at her. “Nadja... we are at IHOP!” 

There are pancakes and sausages and waffles and orange juice and she’s got maple syrup all over her fingers; she’s eating with her hands, because forks and knives hadn’t really been a thing the last time she was human. 

“So, this witch,” says Guillermo conversationally, and oh, _now_ he’s gearing up to _finally_ be useful to her, after he’s dragged her around the island doing all his stupid chores, “did she say anything about how long the curse would last? Or how to reverse it?”

Nadja shook her head morosely and tries to answer, but her mouth is full of hash browns and it’s been so long since she’s eaten that she’s forgotten you can’t really talk while chewing. 

“Swallow,” Guillermo instructs her gently. 

She does so, inexpertly, then says, “No. I didn’t think to ask. I was so freaked the fuck out! I mean, come on! All this, over some makeup brushes? Witches are absolutely _terrible_ people!”

Guillermo sighs. “Do you remember anything about her? Anything that would help me track her down and figure out how to fix you? I’m on a budget, I can’t keep buying _you_ human food _and_ keep up with the blood demand from everyone else...”

Nadja thinks back. Her memory around the incident is mostly occupied with the discomfort of the transformation, physical and emotional. “She had… hair? And she was wearing… clothes.” 

Guillermo looks at the camera.

“She had… um. Oh!” Nadja lights up. “She had these crazy tattoos on her hands.” 

“I guess that’s something to go off of,” Guillermo sighs. “I’ll drop you off at home, and then see if I can find anything out about her.” 

Nadja doesn’t say thank you, but that’s only because her mouth is full of pancake. 

***

“Oh, hey guys,” says Colin Robinson, coming down the front path, briefcase in hand on the way to his office job. “You’re looking well, Nadja.”

She gives him the finger. 

He raises his eyebrows, but goes on: “To be honest, I thought you’d have fled to the hills in shame by now.”

“I wouldn’t have let that happen!” says Guillermo. Nadja wants to punch him. She doesn’t need _him_ to protect _her!_

Colin Robinson shrugs. “Well, I told him you were gone forever. Killed by the witch. He’s pretty upset right now. Didn’t even go to bed when the sun rose, too busy moping.” 

“What?!?” 

“Don’t look at me like that,” says Colin Robinson defensively. “If you really were never going to see him again, he would have had to find out somehow. Better me than… well. Whatever!” 

He strolls away from them down towards the driveway, whistling tunelessly. 

> _COLIN ROBINSON_
> 
> _So, yeah... I may have gotten a little carried away. But now I’ve got to go into work with a terrible energy hangover, thanks to the huge hit I got off Laszlo when I told him, so look, look, I’m paying for it, alright?_

“That bastard,” Nadja growls. 

Guillermo shakes his head. “Dick move,” he agrees, “but look, if Laszlo’s still up, you can explain everything to him now.” 

He guides Nadja to the porch and unlocks the door. “I cannot do it! I cannot do it, Gizmo!” she cries, nervously twisting the edges of her ugly cardigan in stumpy, unelegant human fingers. “I changed my mind, I’ll do as Colin Robinson said, I _will_ leave and run away and never come back—” 

“Get in! You’re letting the sun inside!” hisses Guillermo, dragging her through the doorway and slamming the door shut behind her.

“Who’s this?” Laszlo says, emerging from the gloom, eyeing Nadja suspiciously, and oh, fuck, he doesn’t even _recognize her._ And of course, she should’ve known. She’s nothing without her beauty, her vampiric charms. She’s nobody. She never could be anything else. 

“I am …. uhhh ...” She looks desperately to Guillermo, hoping her hesitation will be enough to indicate to him that she needs a cover story, and _fast._ One that won’t end in her own husband killing her violently, preferably, an outcome that is all too possible in her weakened and disguised state. 

“She’s the window wiper,” improvises Guillermo. 

“Yes!” Nadja jumps in gratefully. “I am… the wiper… and I have come to wash and wipe your windows…” 

> _GUILLERMO_
> 
> _I forgot her accent doesn’t do the V thing. I kind of fucked that one up, but the good thing is that neither of them even knew the joke to begin with, so I guess the only person I disappointed was… myself. Which is a nice change._

“So, you know. Not for eating,” Guillermo says, throwing up a protective hand. 

“Alright,” says Laszlo, looking between the two of them with renewed disinterest. “Well, get on with it, then. And don’t disturb me, I am engaged in protracted brooding due to the premature death of my true love.” 

He stalks off into the Fancy Room. It must really be serious if he’s doing his moping in the Fancy Room. But he’s not mourning _her,_ Nadja finds herself thinking frantically. He’s mourning his imperious princess of the night, who he was forced to love with by virtue of her sharp teeth and her beauty and nothing else...

She ends up outside the bay window of the Fancy Room, scrubbing morosely away with a squeegee and bucket of soapy water Guillermo provided to back up her disguise before running off, presumably to go track down the witch. 

It’s a gloomy, overcast morning, so the small gap in the curtain doesn’t pose enough of a threat for Laszlo to notice it and close it and block Nadja’s view of him.

Through the window, as she gingerly wipes away grime, she watches with mounting distress as Laszlo flings himself across the room, in and out of bat form, floating up to the ceiling and then back down again, slamming his fists against the wall and sobbing into the tasseled pillows of the Fancy Room’s longues and armchairs. 

Despite herself, she’s unable to resist pressing her ear to the glass to try and hear what he’s shouting. Fuck, of course he’s doing Shakespeare. _“...Whip me, ye devils, from the possession of this heavenly sight! Blow me about in winds! Roast me in sulphur! Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!_ Oh, Nadja! Taken from me so cruelly! I would have had a thousand more years with you, my love! My precious jewel! _”_

“He’s actually quite good,” she says, to the camera.

> _NANDOR_
> 
> _Witches are a nasty bunch. They are “mean girls,” if you know what I mean. Very petty. Lots of drama. There is only one thing a witch is good for, and that is finding out what the “hot goss” is. Do you know this word? Hot goss? It sounds like it should be a food, like “hot dog,” but Guillermo says it means the same as “the tea,” which is not a drink, actually, but means rumors and suspicions. Did you know that? Really interesting._

Guillermo tracks down the witch to an apartment by the beach, thanks to a convenient flyer with a cartoon of a witch on it that reads _JENNIFER X: LOCAL WITCH AVAILABLE FOR ALL OCCULT NEEDS. FORTUNES READ, CURSES PLACED. FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM @JENNYSPELLS_STATENISLAND._

“What do you want?” she says, opening the door. Her eye makeup looks amazing. 

“Hi,” says Guillermo nervously, “I’m the, um, familiar-in-law, of the vampire you cursed last night? At Target.” 

She rolls her eyes at him. “Oh, that bitch. She had it coming.” 

Guillermo frowns. “Yeah. Um,” he says, “I was just wondering, can you like, reverse the curse?”

“What are _you_ doing here trying to fix her problems for her?” Jennifer asks with a sneer, one that conjures for Guillermo the ineffable, familiar sense of being sat alone in a high school cafeteria. “You’re a familiar. Not even _her_ familiar. You should be grateful you have one less vampire to be cleaning up after, am I right?”

“She’s my friend,” says Guillermo, which surprises him by not feeling like a lie.

Jennifer cackles. It’s a pretty great laugh, Guillermo must acknowledge. She’s clearly about to slam the door on him as she says, unsympathetically, “Riiiight. Okay. Well, I’m kind of busy right now, so—”

“Whatcha up to?”

She seems a bit thrown off by this, answering automatically, “My fucking Instagram, dude, somehow I got zapped by the algorithm and now my posts are getting buried! I’m trying to fix it, finding the right hashtags, but it’s soooo confusing.” 

“Oh. Well, I know a lot about Instagram,” he says. “I could help you.”

Jennifer looks him up and down skeptically, taking in the sweater and all the rest. “...You do?”

Guillermo wasn’t planning on ever revealing his deepest secret, especially not like this, to a bitchy witch, but if he can use it as leverage to fix Nadja, it will all be worth it. He takes a deep breath and says, “Yeah, I actually run this meme account, called Staten Island Supernatural Memes, so I—”

“Oh my GOD, that’s YOU?!!” shrieks the witch, her insouciant attitude evaporating in an instant, replaced with pure enthusiasm. “Holy _fuck,_ I love that account! The one about how werewolves are so dumb they’d jump off a roof after a squeaky toy, that was sooooo funny!”

“Thanks,” says Guillermo shyly. “Based on a true story.”

“Every time you post, my coven’s group chat goes crazy!” she squeals. “It’s really _you?”_

“Don’t tell anyone,” he says. “It’s only funny if nobody knows who’s behind it.... But, yeah.”

“Wow,” Jennifer says. “That’s, like, crazy.” She puts her hand on her chin, her tattoos swirling slowly as she thinks. “Okay, little fuzzy man. If you help me boost my likes, _and_ make a custom meme for my coven... I’ll turn Nadja back into a vampire.”

“Deal.” 

> _GUILLERMO_
> 
> _Honestly, if I didn’t have this account as an outlet, I’d go crazy. It’s pretty much the only source of positive validation I have. Hitting 5,000 followers the other day was like, the second-best moment of my life. What was number one? Oh, when I became Nandor’s familiar, of course. But seriously, please don’t tell him I run it._
> 
> _Here, look— [shows phone screen to camera, scrolls through Instagram feed of Staten Island Supernatural Memes]_

  
  


Nadja can’t help it. He just looks so _sad._

She comes around to the front door and steps inside, quietly making her way to the curtained entrance to the Fancy Room. “Are you okay?” she asks. Her voice is rough and weak, not the smooth and sultry tone of the woman he loved. 

“Fine, fine,” Laszlo says, sounding choked, not even looking at her. He’s sitting sprawled in one of the armchairs. “I think the kitchen window round the back needs a good scrub down, if you haven’t gotten to it yet.” He waves a hand to get rid of her, but instead she sets down her bucket and squeegee and walks slowly, on sneakered feet, into the room. 

He looks up as she comes closer, around the chair to stand before him.

“You... are the ugliest human I’ve ever seen,” says Laszlo slowly, taking in Nadja’s homeliness. “But there is something enchanting about you…” Then he shakes his head. “What has happened to my impeccable taste in sexual partners? I must be going insane! I’m not the man that I was— I’m sorry, dear girl. It’s been a rough day.” 

She feels her human heart quicken in her chest like a hummingbird. “You think I’m beautiful? Even… even looking like this?”

“I think I must, window washer woman,” says Laszlo. “There is no other explanation for this strange feeling I have, when I look at you…” He throws up a hand, turning away. “But I must not! I have sworn to fuck no more. I am in a state of celibate mourning, for my evening flower, my midnight rose, my Nadja… I’ll never see that beautiful vulva again… I’ll never hear her witty jokes, or her lovely laugh...” 

Nadja feels something inside her weaken, and then crumble fully away with the force of Laszlo’s love, bearing down on her like a tidal wave. How could she ever have doubted it? How could she have been so wrong?

“It’s me, Laszlo!” she says, grabbing her husband by the arms. “It’s your Nadja!”

“Don’t be so cruel to me, I’m in a fragile state!” Laszlo snaps, drawing away. 

“Please! It is me! I got hit with a curse, it turned me human! I wasn’t going to come back, I thought you would never love me like this, because— because I’m—” She holds back a sob. “Laszlo, please. I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I would never have hypnotized any leper in that village other than you. Never, ever.” 

And then his undead hands are cold, so cold, against her flushed face, but they fit perfectly against it even in its changed state. He’s looking at her, wonderingly, recognition dawning, and he is about to speak, when—

“Laszlo, are you still up?” comes Nandor’s voice from outside. “Go to bed, I am worried about your mental state!” 

He comes through the curtain into the Fancy Room, sees Laszlo and Nadja, and lets out a yelp. “Ahhhh! Who is that disgusting human? Get her out of here! She is so ugly, I would not even drink her blood!” 

Laszlo rears up, flings a protective arm around Nadja, and hisses at Nandor. “That’s my _wife!”_

“Whaaaaat?” Nandor blinks in astonishment. “No, it cannot be! Nadja, is that really you? Colin Robinson said you were dead!”

“Colin Robinson is a fucking asshole, and when he comes back here I will turn him inside out with my bare hands so he’ll talk with his anus and shit with his mouth!” 

“Oh! It _is_ you!” Nandor says, with relief. “But what happened? Why are you so… _pink?”_

“It was that awful witch in Target!” Nadja explains. “She cursed me! Right there in the makeup aisle!”

“...Jennifer? With the tattoos?” Laszlo says with a groan.

“You _know_ her?!” Nadja exclaims.

Laszlo shakes his head. “I’m sorry, my love. This… this is all my fault.”

“What? What do you mean?”

He sighs. “I encountered Miss Jennifer a few weeks ago at an antique shop and, well, I ended up in her bed. She had just given me a seeing to, and I was about to return the favor, when I received your call about needing help to hang up those new portraits. So I may have, er, left her a bit wanting, as it were… which she received a cruel reminder of when you came upon her in the Target, hence the damnation.”

Nadja’s eyes fill with hot, stinging tears of adoration. “You gave up the chance to eat witch pussy in order to come help me with boring chores?” 

“I did,” said Laszlo, “and I always will. Always, for you, Nadja.” 

“Oh, Laszlo! Kiss me, you fool,” she says, and he does, deeply and sweetly. As their mouths meet, there’s a _POP!_ and another puff of brown smoke envelopes Nadja, and when she pulls away from the kiss her hair is black and glossy again, her skin pale porcelain, and her fangs are right back where they belong, nestled in a wide and white grin as she stares happily into Laszlo’s eyes.

“Okay,” says Nandor quietly, “I’m just gonna go back to bed now, really happy for you guys, great job on the kissing thing. Congratulations. Yeah. Bye!” 

***

“Guys, guys! I got the witch to reverse the— oh.” 

Guillermo halts at the entrance of the Fancy Room upon glimpsing Nadja and Laszlo’s compromising position, with Laszlo’s wide hand down the front of Nadja’s cheap Target jeans.

“You did what?” she says, confused, sitting up a bit on the sofa. 

“I tracked down the witch, and I made a deal with her, and she said she’d reverse the curse. Looks like it worked, so…” Guillermo trails off. 

Nadja looks at Laszlo. “I thought it was like, a true-love’s-kiss kind of deal,” she says, sounding a little disappointed. “Very fairy-tale.” 

“Exactly,” Laszlo agrees. “I did too. Come on, Gizmo, now why’d you have to go and ruin it like that?” 

“I’m sorry,” he says, automatically sliding into apology mode, “it, uh, must have been a coincidence, if you kissed right when she undid the spell, I didn’t—” 

“No, no, no,” Nadja says quickly. “It’s alright.” She extracts Laszlo’s hand from her pants, which produces a small whimper of loss from him, and gets up and goes over to Guillermo. 

“We can just _say_ it was true love’s kiss. If anyone asks,” she says.

“Sure,” Guillermo agrees. “That’s definitely fine.”

“Thank you, Guillermo,” she says. “You… you did not have to do all that for me. The rescue, and the IHOP, and the witch visit.”

“I kinda did?” says Guillermo. “Familiar, you know.”

“Okay, well, yeah, maybe you did. But still. It was... very nice of you.” She smiles at him, sharp and dangerous and terrifyingly beautiful once more. 

“You’re welcome,” he says, and leans forward a miniscule amount, stupidly expecting a hug, but instead she flaps a hand at him to leave. 

“Now get out of here, if you don’t mind, because I’ve got a lovely bunch of fingers attached to a very lovely husband waiting back there to attack my clitoris.” 

So Guillermo departs, back to his room, where sleep finally awaits him, and the moans of the happy vampire couple fill the Fancy Room behind him as he goes. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> fic title from everything everything - ["photoshop handsome"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6udfNIzRUX0)


End file.
